“Quail feather, specifically. I found it on the ridge. Saw deer tracks too. And the creek’s full of trout. Throw in a few chickens and you could live here forever.”
A crazy idea: the list of objections so long it was pointless even to itemize them. Roy had a crack at itemizing anyway. First there was Rhett, of course. And next? And after that? Nothing jumped out at him.
“We’ve been searching for a place like this,” Lee said.
“Who?”
“The progressive element in the regiment, I’ve been telling you about. Hope I’m not being too forward, Roy, but would it be all right with you if a few of them came up for a look?”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“It just feels right, Roy, asking you.”
This line of talk put Roy in mind of Sonny Junior and their lost lands, but he didn’t think it was a good time for mentioning Sonny, so he ate the trout in silence, washed it down with creek water Lee had brought back in her canteen. A bumblebee the size of one of those fifty-eight-caliber rounds flew by, not very fast. Then another, even slower, and a yellow butterfly, slower than that.
“Sleepy?” Lee said.
“Now that you mention it.” But he wasn’t.
They lay on the blanket.
“Does Jesse know?” Roy said.
“Know what?”
“Or any of the others-about you?”
“Of course not,” Lee said. “How authentic would that be?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Women fought in disguise-horrible word-but no one ever knew until they got them to the surgeon’s tent or the burial pit. Therefore telling people isn’t authentic.”
“What about me?”
“You,” said Lee.
She put her arms around him, kissed his mouth. He’d always loved Marcia’s kisses, but this was different: he got the feeling that Lee was giving every little bit of herself in this kiss, like there was no before and after. Made him want to do the same back, but still, with the sun up and him being sober, Roy knew he had no right to expect anything like last night. But it was like last night, or better; and therefore if not a right, what? A privilege? He thought about that after, sweat running off him, eyes closed, the day hot pink through his eyelids.
“You must have happened sometimes,” she said.
“So I’m authentic too?”
“Oh, yes,” Lee said. He felt her lips on his cheek, the side of his neck, against his ear. “That’s the whole point.”
Roy cooled off. Heat must have been shimmering up from their bodies. He thought he could hear the waterfall.
When Roy awoke, Lee was sitting in one of the window spaces, reading the diary. “Fell out of your pocket,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Roy didn’t mind. “Who’s Zeke?” he said.
“His body man-doesn’t he say that somewhere?” Lee turned the pages.
“Is that like a bodyguard?”
Lee looked at him over the diary. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“More like a personal servant.”
“A paid servant?”
“No.”
Roy went over, read: takin Zeke bac fer boddyman sed godbis an wen up to th montan Hows fer godbis up thar.
“The standard of literacy is pretty typical of the period,” Lee said.
Roy didn’t care about that. Zeke wen asckulcin but I larnt him difernt.
He could feel Lee’s eyes tracking along with his. This time she had nothing to say. Roy walked out the back of the Mountain House, past the fire pit, still smoking, and into the slave quarters. He had a careful look around, saw what he’d already seen, the rusted iron ball lying in the weeds that overgrew the dirt floor; the plant world reclaiming everything, but maybe not fast enough.
A crow cawed, rose up out of the woods behind the slave quarters, hunched over, wings beating furiously. Roy went outside, crossed to the back of the plateau where the mountain began rising again, found what might have been a trail, might have been a chance series of openings between the trees, started up. The air was still and warm, full of insect sounds. Roy was sweating and a little thirsty by the time the ground leveled and he stepped into a clearing the size of a baseball infield.
Roy thought of it as a clearing because there were no trees, but chest-high plants grew everywhere. A man with his back to Roy was hard at work chopping them down with a machete and stuffing them into a plastic trash bag. His tightly curled hair gleamed with sweat and his T-shirt, with a picture of Bob Marley on the back, was soaked through. He was singing a song under his breath, but Roy was close enough to catch it.
“Yes I’m gonna walk that Milky White Way
Oh Lord, some of these days.”
Roy stopped breathing. The man must have sensed that, because he immediately stopped singing and spun around. He saw Roy, dropped the machete, raised his hands high.
“Don’ shoot.”
Roy hadn’t realized he was carrying the gun, didn’t even remember picking it up off the blanket. He almost said, Don’t worry, it’s not real, but of course that wasn’t true. “Why would I do a thing like that?” he said.
“Seen you DEA types get testy after one of these long climbs,” the man said. He looked more like Chuck Berry than Bob Marley, although he was lighter skinned than either. “I would too, hot day like this’n, specially with the money they’re payin’ you.”
“I’m not a DEA type.”
“FBI? BATF?” The man squinted a little at him; Roy was still in the shade. “Can’t say as I recognize the outfit.”
“You’re safe with me,” Roy said.
“I’m not feelin’ safe, some reason,” the man said.
“Put your hands down.”
The man lowered his hands, but slowly, and kept them open toward Roy. “Couldn’t be a hunter, this not bein’ huntin’ season,” he said. “ ‘Less you’re not against bendin’ a rule or two, the kind that don’t make no sense, anyways. Which case, you and me have somethin’ in common.”
Roy moved into the clearing, glanced around, fingered a leaf of one of the plants. “How long’s all this been growing here?”
“Since’t Adam and Eve. It’s nature.”
“I meant organized like this. A plot.”
“Ain’t no plot,” said the man, his voice rising and turning a little querulous. “Thought you wasn’t law enforcement.”
“I’m not.”
The man still looked worried. “Don’t suppose you could be provin’ that somehow.”
“By flashing a badge that says ‘not the police’?” Roy said.
The man laughed, revealing a mouthful of stained teeth. “There’s the trouble with this… hobby,” he said, glancing around the clearing. “Sometimes you get to thinkin’ not quite right. It’s a relaxin’ hobby, don’t get me wrong, but the thinkin’ part can lose its straightness, you know what I mean.”
“Yes,” Roy said.
“Name’s Ezekiel, by the way.” He held out his hand.
Roy shook it. “Roy.”
“Happy to know you, Roy. Truth is, I’m feelin’ relief you turn out to be whoever you turn out to be, what with
